About
Why do this?
The Macalester College Archives collects, preserves, and makes available materials about the college and the campus community. While it is easier to capture official administrative responses to COVID-19 via campus-wide communications, it is more difficult to archive personal experiences. How will the future Mac community understand the extraordinary changes that have taken place across campus? How will those of us grappling with these changes remember them down the road? By capturing materials which reflect individual, personal, and candid experiences, we hope to tell stories:
- how has COVID-19 impacted and changed this Spring 2020 semester at Macalester; what are student and other Mac experiences?
- how are Mac students and others finding community during this time?
- what are student orgs, students on study away, students with competition seasons now canceled, among many others, now doing?
- how is this pandemic impacting different communities, and how has it highlighted the disparities and inequalities already amongst us; how can sharing and increasing awareness help us work to address these?
- what changes have been made to teaching and learning?
- what shifts have you had to make, even for the must mundane things; what is your new "normal"?
Who should contribute?
- Students, staff, and faculty at Macalester College, from anywhere around the world--what are YOUR experiences, wherever you may be?
What types and formats of materials should you contribute?
- photos*
- social media posts and screenshots
- video or audio recordings, voice memos*
- art
- emails
- stories, narratives, thoughts, journal entries
- course syllabi (original from the start of the semester and now revised)
- there is a good list of other suggestions to think about here under "What Can I Contribute?"
- we can take most kinds of file formats, including audio, video, images, (e.g. jpg, pdf, mp4, mp3, etc.); contact us at archives@macalester.edu if you have questions
*Be sure other people who participated or may be included in your materials also grant permission to submit to the Archives and digital collection.
How do I contribute?
- Go to this Contribute page, and depending on what type of item you have, select from the drop-down. You'll be prompted to enter some pieces of information about what you're contributing. Once you Contribute, your material will be placed in a queue before being approved for sharing publicly as part of the digital collection.
- You can choose to contribute to the Archives but not have your material published online. You can also choose to have your contribution shared publicly online but be anonymous. We still ask for your email for internal administrative purposes.
- Contribute multiple items! Though they need to be uploaded one at a time so that we get information for each item.
I'm a Mac faculty member—can I have my students participate?
- We're glad you're interested! Since contributing materials to this site is also contributing to the College Archives, participation should be voluntary and not required or tied to class requirements. Contact Ellen Holt-Werle at holtwerle@macalester.edu to chat more.
Using this Collection
Materials in this digital collection are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0); copyright belongs to the contributors and creators, not Macalester College.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to students, staff, and faculty collaborating on this site:
- Dave Collins, Erin Porter, Chris Schommer, Mary Lou Steiner, Louann Terveer, Kova Walker-Lečić, DeWitt Wallace Library
- Professor Amy Sullivan, History Department and students in HIST 376-01 Public History
- current and recent student employees in the College Archives, including Michael Milner, Lidija Namike, Teresa Padron, Shyanne Redlin, Shireen Zaineb
Many other archives and digital collection sites (not necessarily all COVID-19-related) have provided design inspiration and helpful resources: